newbreview.com’s Comment of the Week 28th July 2012

This week we’ll skip the usual sarcastic introduction and jump straight into the action: our comment of the week goes to one intrepid reader that managed to not only write the longest comment in newbreview.com’s history but their comment also managed to break our comments system on the site. Unfortunately, due to the comment’s epic 2,400 word length we were not able to post it on the site (every time we tried to approve it the entire back system of the site crashed) we thought there would do our best to acknowledge the enthusiasm of our reader.

One of our dedicated readers provided a in depth and comprehensive reply to Tom’s Why I Hate The End of Mass Effect 3 article, that we are now posting below in its unedited form.

10 billion times throughout the game We cannot beat the Reapers conventionally So if the plan had failed then the only logical course of action was to get the hell away from earth. The crucible couldnâ€™t have done this since that lumbering giant barely had enough thrust to move after it got out of the relay. So since it was there and still functioning they thought, oh wow commander shepard and anderson are still alive so I we should dock it since they got the arms open, since the normandy is insanely fast it got to the relay a lot quicker. ANYWAYS, to comment on the endings themselves, if you play ALL the games and do ALL of the side missions it ends up making complete sense that the END IS THE SAME.

The feeling you are supposed to be left with is not WHAT I CHOOSE DIDNâ€™T MATTER. Of course it mattered, you choose to fight the reapers when no one else did, you choose to go to Ilos, to the Omega 4 Relay, to earth, you choose all of these things. The whole point was to allow the story to have millions of pathways that all converge to one moment when a certain outcome happens. The CYCLE that they go on and on about at the end of the game. So many times this cycle is reference, and each time they got closer and closer to activating the citadel and finally when organics manage to activate it of COURSE ONLY ONE THING CAN HAPPEN, itâ€™s the end of a cycle, itâ€™s about convergence. It wouldnâ€™t make any sense if you could end the cycle any differently than you could in the game. The citadel was designed to do ONE ending not a ton of different ones.

I believe that the game is a complete work of genius, yes I DID find the online cut away from the game a bit out of character after playing the rest of the games, but I fully understand Bioware when they want to get on the bandwagon with all of these other games that have successful multiplayer. Another point I would like to make, if you play through the game once and find your ending, why should it matter that they all are the same. If you have only played it once they you are exposed to one playthrough of plot and knowledge and the game makes plenty of sense. If you do a second playthrough you have to understand that since you already know what is going to happen you will automatically try to COMPARE that ending with your previous ending, if you consider yourself to be fully immersed in the game it doesnâ€™t make sense for commander Shepard to suddenly look down at the little ghostly catalyst kid and say HEY YOU! DICK! THIS WAS EXACTLY THE SAME AS LAST TIME! I DID THE WHOLE GAME DIFFERENTLY BUT YOU ARE STILL SAYING THE SAME THINGS! SO NOW IM GOING TO BE ANGRY!!

My personal opinion is that the game was done amazingly, a very bumpy details here and there, but the entire plot is absolutely incredible. This is the best game I have ever played, through and through

1. Normandy Escaping. If you play through the game as I have stated above you will not view the Reapers as just another enemy. Seriously, the Sovereign class Reapers might as well be indestructible. Yes you killed one in the first game, but that obviously had a serious connected to the power put into Saren in the end to kill Shepard, he says I AM SOVEREIGN, so maybe thatâ€™s a key. The other reapers were not doing this and thus were invincible. Knowing this when Shepard lost communication with everyone else and blacked out the only logical conclusion would be to save as many as you can and get the hell out of here. The big reapers were just destroying the ships not taking many hits at all. Joker has only one good choice and that is to get out of there, given the speed of the normandy he was out first.

2. Beam me up Joker!I spent a lot of time picking my final squad and it was very apparent after the two conversations with Javik and Garrus that they were the only two that had a truly compelling reason to be on the ground and fighting to the death. Neither of them would have been thinking about any closure, that fight was their closure. I picked both of them and had no plot errors. Now, for the ones who had beamed characters, that IS STUPID and bioware should have done something about it. Sorry to those gamers.

3. Destruction of all mass relays I have stated I played through all the games and did not get the Arrival DLC. I donâ€™t know about this exploding mass relay business, so I guess that puts me in the other kind of explosionâ€™ category. Now for the stranded fleets mention go to reason

4. (I believe that the relay to the batarian homeworld was destroyed and the batarians were THEN killed by the reapers not the relay).4. Victory fleet stranded. In the first game a comments is made about how the protheans made the conduit mass relay. So the technology is apparent to some and I would assume with all of the best scientist along with the crucible that they would be able to recreate that relay. On top of that, seriously, the flotilla? Starving? The flotilla goes around for how long on their ventures? They have plenty of supplies. The alliance is always called Alliance Navy, just like today Im sure those ships have plenty of supplies to last for awhile. (For those who picked the control/synthesis ending the reapers would have helped them recover just like the geth helped the quarians except a thousandfold)

5. War Assets. If you go in the menus you can read about how each war asset was used. It is very clear. Each asset is mentioned and can be explored through those menus, though that will take some time. On top of that the different races are showed in the final fight attacking the reapers, yes the alliance was the primary one but that makes sense with their rating being 1600 with other races being only around 800.

6. No Closure. Im sorry, if you felt that there was no closure you didnâ€™t play the game to itâ€™s fullest. A lot of the game is unlocked by doing more in the previous games. If anything it is more of a tribute to the importance of choice, if you didnâ€™t do it before, then you donâ€™t get it later. Now if you wanted more closure from the characters, GO TALK TO THEM! you can reach them all through the comms guy and by walking around the final level. Each conversation is a crucial one, I got goosebumps talking to Garrus and with Liara (my love interest in the game) I couldnâ€™t imagine a better place to bring back the old mass effect one theme Virgilâ€™ bigger goosebumps there and plenty of closure.

7. Another Twist Ending? Seriously?If you didnâ€™t see this ending coming, you probably didnâ€™t play through mass effect 1 to its fullest. A lot of character development and information is given in this game and in the codex. This ending is very predicable, in the bits where admiral hacket it talking about the crucible its clear when he mentions that he doesnâ€™t know how the energy is emitted that something will happen in the end of the game that has a change of energy being a choice that shepard is going to make. As for the other characters, Jack can be talked to by the comms guy, she is in the back WITH her students. Taliâ€™s homeworld was already being rebuilt if you go talk to her on the normandy. Mirandaâ€™s sister => ME2 loyalty mission and ME3 sanctuary. Liara, shadow broker DLC and ME3 on the normandy after Mars doing a ton of shadow broker thingsâ€™. There is a lot of closure, if there was any more closure or vids of the other fleets or slow mos of wrex owning people i might have exploded considered my final mission took 4+ hours.

8. The final revelation (God Child)This is where it becomes obvious to me that the commentator didnâ€™t play through the games well. My illusive man shot himself in the head (is that standing down?) a wondering reminder of Saren back on the citadel who also shot himself, showing that shepard had something about him that could overwhelm the indoctrination. Which that right there completely debunks any indoctrination plot idea posed by some other videos. To the god childâ€™, I like the way Bioware decided to bring about the child, something familiar and relaxed, similar to the way everything in the geth interface changed itself to be interpreted easier to the user. The child was just a way that the being that governed the Reapers chose to present itself to Shepard. Also, obliterates and cheapensâ€™ is pretty much exactly what you want at this point in the game, do you want closure? Well thatâ€™s what closure is, you want to know where the reapers came from? Obviously a very advanced civilization a long time ago (maybe in a galaxy far far away ) found out that the created will always rebel and thus but this initiative into effect. Now before you decide to needlessly bash circular logic, let me try to explain a bit about how it is thought about.

In cycles, a beginning point it placed and an end point is, the middle is pretty much irrelevant except for the fact that it must return to the same beginning point. That is the trend of circular logic, in the clip about the geth that IS the proof that shows that this cycle in the ONE that breaks the cycle. The reaper on rannoch says something to the extent of this conflict here proves you wrongâ€™ and then shepard goes on to prove him wrong. That is the whole point of that scene, to show you that the cycle is being broken. Now about the whole yo dawg, i heard you dont want to be killed by synthetics Imagine yourself in the situation the god child was in, the best course of action once you realize that the created will always rebel against the created you created a cycle of sorts that allows for organics to try to prove this wrong. That is the cycle that takes place in this game. Now you could say that this cycle is stupid because he built synethics to do it, but he didnâ€™t have much other choice sense organics are clouded by emotion that wouldnâ€™t be able to comprehend (something fairly well stated tuoohghrut the entire game) so he built a race of synthetic beings, more alive that normal synthetics, more like EDI and less like the geth. That could be reasoned with quickly and would be able to see the clear and correct decisions and not rebelâ€™. The would synthetic should NOT be applied to the Reapers. (Bioware agrees since the synthetic exclusive power conditions do no apply to reapers and only the geth => reapers are not synthetics).

Now if you would like to argue more about how the god child should have noticed this when the geth stopped rebelling and stopped the reaper invasion we can talk more about Natural Selection. Simple, the cause and effect are not seen clearly in natural selection. If women only like men with beards, only men with beards survive, but later on men wonâ€™t necessarily know that they have a beard because before women only liked bearded men. It wouldnâ€™t make sense for the child to end it until shepard (or who ever the first organic is to be at that place ) gets to the crucible and goes from there. 9. Shepardâ€™s acceptance of the god childâ€™s bullsh*tThe paragraph immediately above should answer why he didnâ€™t reject it, he understands circular logic. (or maybe he was just really tired and wanted it all to be over with *jokin*) And that bit about EDI, she is telling it TOO YOUR FACE that you are special, and that you SHEPARD are the reason that the cycle is ending because you have brought peace to this cycle and thus because of that the cycle ENDS tada! And he is given the option to reject, aka destroy, aka the renegade option if you want your like renegade star. He will go against the little kid who said if you do this the peace wonâ€™t last, that IS the option you want, please pay more attention to the dialogue in the game. Reason 10 Players Choice ultimately didnâ€™t matter as Promised. Back to the circular logic bit. When a cycle ends, it will end in the same way. That is clear, so for each ending to be EXTREMELY similar is exactly what is expected.

And if you think player choice doesnâ€™t matter then maybe the whole game was a selection to see if players understood the game or not, if players chose to go and do everything, if the players chose to try to comprehend a very complex idea or turned and ran away, this is completely a game of player choice and I will defend that entirely. I chose synthesis over the renegade and control so I chose to understand. The reason that other games had different endings is because other games didnâ€™t have any massive cycles at hand. And an aside to his last comment about how synthesis does the most injustice to the franchise, this point is just as complex and the circular logic. The concept of unity (hah, just noticed that that is the name of your revive power, didnâ€™t think of why before maybe this is why) is one that Shepard has stood for the entire game. Unity is the concept of bringing together and strengthening because of that, Shepard brought the races together but he did NOT destroy one and take another. He unified them, if you are trying to apply this to the Protheans think about this, the Protheans had only one type and that was their demise but this new cycle has many types of creatures, during synthesis shepard unifies organics and synethics, he does NOT remove one or take another (like in the other endings) he combines them, just like he did with the races, he unified them together and recognized the value in each to where he knew that both were needed to go on. That is the whole message of this game.

Made it this far? Let’s all take part in a round of applause for our anonymous commentator!

Be sure to check back for next week’s Comment of the Week where we will likely return to the usual sea of hateful words.

Sam Crisp on Comment on Year of Shame: Co-Op Month { I can't play Castle Crasher anymore after having the woods level music stuck in my head for a full day at work. Can't believe you... }

Sam Crisp on Comment on DLC Review:- Burial at Sea... { If you enjoyed a trip back to Rapture I cannot recommend revisiting the second game and Minerva's Den enough. Bioshock 2 improved on so much... }

Onyersix on Comment on Year of Shame: Co-Op Month { Yeah, it REALLY suffers from repetition. There are marginal distractions in the form of boss fights, but I certainly wouldn't bother with it again. }